Men taking drugs for sexual potency showed almost triple the rate of sexually transmitted diseases compared with those not taking the medications, a Harvard University study found.
The results, from an analysis of the health-insurance claims of men ages 40 and older, may have more to do with the nature of the men using the impotence drugs than with the medicines leading them to have riskier sex, the research found.
The study, looking at men taking Pfizer’s Viagra and Eli Lilly’s Cialis, was published this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The higher rate of infections was seen in the year before and after the men started taking the drugs. That suggests users of medicines to treat erectile dysfunction, which also include Bayer’s Levitra, may be more likely to engage in unsafe sex.
“Younger people have more sex partners than older folks,” said lead study author Anupam Jena, a medical resident at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. “But per sexual encounter, the actual safeness of the sex is probably lower among older folks, in the sense that they don’t use condoms.”
About 19 million new sexually spread infections occur each year in the U.S., almost half among those ages 15 to 24, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Still, people ages 40 to 49 accounted for the largest proportion of new HIV/AIDS cases, 27 percent, in 2007. Users of the drugs also had higher rates of chlamydia.
